Instituto de Educação

Economic crises and unemployment have profound impact on mental health and well-being. Main goal of the Healthy Employment (HE) project is to enhance intersectoral actions promoting mental health among unemployed, namely through the implementation and effectiveness-evaluation of short-term and sustainable group interventions. The project follows a RE-AIM-based (Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance) framework for assessing a cognitive-behavioural and psychoeducational intervention that has been developed for promoting mental health among unemployed people. It is a short-term group intervention (five sessions, four hours each, 20 unemployed persons per group) focused on mental health literacy, interpersonal communication and of emotional regulation. Implementation of the intervention will be carried out by clinical psychologists, following a standardized procedure manual. Effectiveness will be assessed through a randomized field study with two arms (intervent...

The main objective of this work was to translate the English version of ASSET (A Shortened Stress Evaluation Tool) into the Portuguese version and to validate its psychometric properties. Additionally, this work tested the convergent validity of the instrument. The translation and retroversion were conducted by experts and submitted to the authors for approval. Within an observational, cross-sectional study, regarding mental health at the workplace, ASSET together with other scales was applied to a sample of 405 participants. The psychometric validity of the subscales was studied using confirmatory factorial analysis. The factorial structure of ASSET is globally supported by the results, with the Perceptions of Your Job and Attitudes Towards your Organisation subscales requiring slight adjustments in the item structure and the Your Health subscales replicating the original structure. The convergent validity also supports the ASSET, showing that all subscales are significantly correl...

This thesis addresses the relation between mathematical competence and the use of information and communication technologies, particularly the Internet, in the context of a problem-solving competition named Campeonato de Resolução de Problemas Sub14, promoted by the Mathematics Department of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Algarve. More precisely its objective is to identify and understand the participants’ views regarding the mathematical activity, the competences involved and the role of technology used by the students in the competition.
Drawing on a critical interpretation of selected literature the theoretical perspectives involved in this study can be organized and represented by a constellation of concepts, in which problem-solving, competence development and the standpoint of Mathematics as a human activity are gravitating around the technology that brings the competition Sub14 to life: the Internet.
Using a case study methodology, the field work focused on the collection of empirical data by requesting all the finalists of the competition to answer a questionnaire and selecting eleven of the students and their parents for a detailed interview.
The analysis of the participants’ views revealed a sharp differentiation between school mathematical activity and the mathematical activity developed in the problems of Sub14. These students also perceived some changes in their own attitudes towards the tasks proposed by the teachers within the classroom. Moreover, the obtained data clearly shows that the participants face the use of the Internet as naturally as any other form of communication.
Despite this apparent indifference towards the technology used, they show that the most motivating factors are due to the particular characteristics of this competition that are directly related with the Internet. One of such characteristics can be summarized as the dichotomy massification/individualization that the Internet is able to provide. In what concerns the mathematical and technological competence elicited by this competition, evidences were found that it improves the ability to solve mathematical problems, develops mathematical reasoning and communication, as well as it increases technological fluency based on the use and exploration of handy and available everyday technological tools.

Keywords: Mathematical Activity, Problem-solving, Internet, Mathematical Competence, Technological Competence.

Neste artigo discute-se a actividade de resolução de problemas de uma jovem participante no campeonato online de matemática “Sub14”, considerando o tipo de abordagem utilizado na resolução de um problema e a forma como esta é mediada pela utilização de uma ferramenta digital, particularmente no que concerne à esquematização e utilização de signos icónicos capazes de exprimir de forma eficaz o raciocínio da concorrente. Como quadro teórico de análise, adopta-se o conceito de humanos-com-media (Borba & Villarreal, 2005) e a noção de artefacto mediador (Wertsch, 1991), centrais na impossibilidade de separação entre o sujeito, o objecto e a acção.

Este artigo incide sobre um campeonato de resolução de problemas online, o Sub14, e visa obter uma perspectiva da actividade de resolução de problemas dos participantes, tendo em conta duas preocupações fundamentais: reconhecer um conjunto de aspectos significativos no contexto em análise, ao ser encarado como um sistema de actividade, e entender o papel mediador das ferramentas tecnológicas nessa actividade.
Como quadro teórico de análise, adoptamos a Teoria da Actividade Histórico-Cultural, em articulação com uma visão da Matemática e da sua aprendizagem como uma actividade humana, essencialmente evolutiva, no sentido em que é o resultado de processos de matematização. A noção de artefacto mediador, central na impossibilidade de separação entre o sujeito, o objecto e a acção, é igualmente um conceito fundamental na análise dos dados.
Os resultados permitem evidenciar traços de um sistema de actividade de resolução de problemas que salientam especificidades, tanto no plano da estrutura desse sistema como no papel assumido pelas ferramentas digitais.

Palavras-chave: Resolução de problemas, sistema de actividade, mediação, tecnologias digitais.

"La résolution de problèmes continue à être considérée comme une activité privilégiée pour l’apprentissage des Mathématiques par de nombreux chercheurs nationaux et internationaux, et cette perspective a conduit à plusieurs reformulations du curriculum portugais. Cet article adresse les données recueillies et analysées dans le cadre d'une recherche dont le but est de comprendre l’activité de résolution de problèmes mathématiques des jeunes, dans des environnements autres que celui de l’école enrichis par plusieurs technologies. L’étude présentée, de nature interprétative, s’est basée sur le recueil d’informations par des entrevues semi-structurées faites à onze participants d’une édition du Championnat de Problèmes Mathématiques – Sub14®, et sur la compilation de documents, en particulier des résolutions que les concurrents ont soumis en format électronique. Les résultats montrent des différences significatives entre l’activité de résolution de problèmes dans la classe et au sein du Sub14, et montrent que cet environnement encourage la mobilisation des connaissances, des techniques et des compétences, qui permettent aux concurrents de résoudre chaque situation nouvelle de manière efficace.

Mots-clés: Championnat de Mathématiques, Résolution de Problèmes, Curriculum de Mathématiques."

"Being aware that school is just one of many places where youngsters learn, the research community has been stressing the need to deepen knowledge about the role and relevance of beyond school mathematical learning contexts. In this paper we are focusing on the mathematical problem solving activity that occurs at Sub14 - a beyond school web-based competition. Our purpose is to describe and understand how do participants engage in solving mathematical problems within the competition, and what are their perspectives regarding the differences and the similarities of the problem solving activity in the mathematics classroom and in the competition Sub14. Participants’ perspectives show an overlap between mathematical activity developed in those two contexts. The analysis of participants’ productions illustrate how they merge knowledge about problem solving acquired in this beyond school context with mathematics content knowledge, learnt at school.

Keywords: mathematical problem solving; beyond school learning; web-based competition."

This paper addresses mathematical problem solving activity within the context of aweb-based beyond-school competition – SUB14. Using a qualitative approach, we aimat finding evidences of the contestants’ mathematical competence and technological fluency by analysing four solutions to a particular geometry problem from participantswho decided to use GeoGebra. Even though they all make use of the same tool, their approaches to the problem differ in terms of the mathematical and technological fluency they show. We interpret their different ways of dealing with the tool and withmathematical knowledge as instances of students-with-media in problem solving.